See the documentary Inside Job – a forensically researched, superbly delivered film about the 2008/2009 financial collapse – to see what the Euro leaders really have to deal with, the rating agencies delivering them an ultimatum.
As Inside job shows, the rating agencies are simply tools of the big financial players, so whatever they say, we can assume, is deliberate, meddling politics, for BIG’s sake. It beggars belief that we haven’t seen through them and the whole system before. Why haven’t we had a detailed analysis as we see in Inside Job presented to us by big media? Answer: Because big media like the rating agencies are tools of the big players.
What happens with the Euro is important and Germany-France will not let it disintegrate. Market positions will be lost. Much is the fault of the original political planners of the Euro, who in growth conditions (anything in a boom, even Ponzi schemes, is welcome), didn’t pursue political and economic integration.
Greece etcetera were all allowed to in-debt themselves – they are involved of course – but ‘yesterday’s’ good rules (and forty/fifty years ago there were rules) would have prevented the rampaging indebtedness of the noughties. It’s a Ponzi crime without a criminal, and the poor and middle groups are paying with VAT tax rises, general tax increases and CUTS. Society is now in debtors’ jail for a crime they had nothing to do with. We commit fraud, we go to jail. The banks commit fraud they get bigger bonuses. This isn’t my politics talking – this is fact.
Some empirical facts to ponder: “The financial services industry’s share of profits increased from 10% in the 1980s to 40% in 2007, and the value of its shares (in the overall) went from 6% to 23%, while the industry only accounts for 5% of private sector employment.” Household debt in the U.S. grew from 3% of disposable income in 1998 to 130% in 2008. Prime mortgage delinquency as a percentage of loans increased from 2.5% in 1998 to 118% in 2008 – Manuel Castells.
Power knew.
Politicians rarely have the courage to be honest enough to do something truly good for society. What is needed (from Obama too) is political courage, governed not by economic interests but human decency.
There is nothing wrong (plenty right) about Keynesian style intervention in economies. No child should be without a proper education. No person in ‘accidental trouble’ should be without an emergency (well-run) hospital to go to, without having to sell her/his house to do it.
What we now need is publication of every decision, every Act, big or small, by governments, every day of their political lives, on websites where ordinary folk can comment and react.
If the super rich continue to manipulate the economics of society, in morally reprehensible if not legally criminal ways, then they should have their ill-gottens taken off them. It’s really that simple. No defense for Ponziisms – Ponziism is a crime against all societies and they who are responsible should be before judges. The savings and loan fraudists went to jail in the early 1990s. Now put the current fraudists inside the courts, try, convict and send them to jail.
In 1999, Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and Jim Leach (R-Iowa) brought a bill to Congress to repeal the Glass–Steagall (bank control) Act of 1932/33. It was passed on Republican party voting lines. Clinton signed it into law. Perhaps these three now could weekend-visit the Ponzi-scheme fraudists - who lied and sold and packaged and repackaged junk financial products – as they sit, with Madoff, playing checkers and telling stories and eating overcooked mushy potatoes, contemplating their crimes.
